ALEC's Report Card Receives Failing Marks

Via the Great Lakes Center

EAST LANSING, Mich. (May 9, 2013) – Ranking states is a popular tool for education advocacy groups, with the goal of advancing a policy agenda based on ideologically driven pre-packaged reforms. These report cards receive considerable media attention, although few reflect research-based evidence on the efficacy of particular polices. The 18th edition of the American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform is no different according to an academic review.

Christopher Lubienski, associate professor of education policy and Director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the University of Illinois, and T. Jameson Brewer, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, reviewed ALEC's Report Card for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review was produced by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

Lubienski and Brewer find that ALEC draws its grades exclusively not from research organizations, but from like-minded market-orientated advocacy organizations.

"Furthermore, when studies are highlighted in this report, they do not represent the peer-reviewed research on a given issue, are often of extremely poor quality, and generally unsuited for supporting their claim."

In their review, Lubienski and Brewer provide two key areas – alternative teacher certification and school choice – to highlight gaps between ALEC's agenda and empirical evidence. Despite multiple claims that a "growing body of research indicates…" – the report offers absolutely no supporting evidence. Math results, which have a lower pass rate, were used to compare traditionally-certified teachers to alternatively-certified teachers. Meanwhile alternatively-certified teachers were portrayed using their reading results.

"Many of the grades given to states reflect the level to which pro-market policies have been implemented while the grades systematically ignore meaningful measurements of equality and outcomes" according to the review.

Readers of ALEC's Report Card should consider it a statement of policy preferences and not an overview of research on education reforms.

The reviewers conclude, "At best, the report serves as an amalgamation of other like-minded think tanks' assessments of states' adoption of pro-market policies, and thus offers nothing new … it provides little or no usefulness to policymakers."

Find the report by Lubienski and Brewer on the Great Lakes Center website: www.greatlakescenter.org

Teachers Love Their Lives, but Struggle in the Workplace

A new Gallup poll finds

Teachers have high personal wellbeing, as evidenced by their high life evaluations and emotional wellbeing scores, and this may prove beneficial to their students and the broader community. It is unclear whether the relatively higher scores of teachers on several measures of wellbeing are because working in that profession enhances one's wellbeing, or if people who have higher wellbeing in general seek out teaching professions. Prior research, however, has demonstrated the significant role that the workplace plays in wellbeing outcomes. Still, teacher's low workplace wellbeing, relative to other professional occupations, indicates school and community leaders have important issues to address in the school workplace in order for teachers and students to reach their full potential. It is absolutely critical to raise teachers' workplace engagement, because their engagement is the No. 1 predictor and driver of student engagement, which Gallup research shows impacts student wellbeing and academic success. The positive news is that these workplace struggles can be addressed. Teachers and school leaders need to work together to improve the work environment.

Despite these workplace challenges, teachers love their work and the life it produces

Right To Work Is A Lie — It's No Rights At Work

More on "Right to work" being a lie.

Supporters of so-called “right to work” laws argue that they advocate for a cause whose noble aim is to advance personal liberty and promote economic growth. They wield buzz words like “freedom” and “choice” for their messaging. They opine that too many workers needlessly suffer because corporate America cannot free itself from the shackles of greedy labor unions. A non-critical eye may see a movement that champions freedom and offers hope. However, if you look just beneath the surface of the “right to work” cause, you will see a campaign that is built on distortions and predicated on lies and whose unstated purpose would undermine workers’ safety, economic security and well-being. The true goal of right to work is to put more money into the pockets of corporate shareholders. The consequence of these purposes, whether intended or unintended, is a diminished middle class.

Right to work (RTW) does not provide a financial benefit to workers. It hurts them – financially and physically. A viable labor movement is the best way to advance the wellbeing of the middle class. Here’s what the empirical research shows in terms of worker compensation and workplace safety:

• The average worker in a RTW state earns about $1,500 less per year than a person working in a non-RTW state.
• Unions raise worker pay by roughly 20 percent.
• In Ohio, teachers working in non-union charter schools receive annual salaries that are about $16,000 less than those paid to traditional public school teachers. The gap is even larger when compared to what for-profit charter schools pay their teachers.
• The rate of employer-sponsored health insurance and pensions is lower in RTW states.
• Worker fatalities in the construction industry are 34 percent higher in RTW states.

Economic development is not enhanced by RTW legislation. In fact, the enactment of RTW laws almost certainly hinders growth and prosperity:

• Research finds no relationship between the presence of a RTW law and state unemployment rates, per capita income or job growth.
• When asked what influences their plant-location decision process, RTW is not an important criterion for small manufacturers.
• Low-wage workers result in lower tax revenues, putting infrastructure needs and education and other publicly funded services at risk.
• Lower wages also mean less spending by consumers, which stunts economic expansion.
• States with the lowest percentage of workers in unions have relatively weak middle classes.

In addition to fewer, lower paying, less safe jobs and an erosion of infrastructure and decreased levels of public services, RTW robs our country of its democratic principles. Research shows that a weakened labor movement results in lower voter turnout and less participation by ordinary citizens in the political process. Maybe that is exactly what the RTW folks want; a means of keeping the political cronies of the richest in power so their interests will be forever served. Right to work is a carrot for a select few at the top of the economic food chain and a stick for everyone else.

New Research Uncovers Fresh Trouble for VAM Evaluations

As more and more schools implement various forms of Value-Added method (VAM) evaluation systems, we are learning some disturbing things about how reliable these methods are.

Education Week's Stephan Sawchuk, in "'Value-Added' Measures at Secondary Level Questioned," explains that value-added statistical modeling was once limited to analyzing large sets of data. These statistical models projected students' test score growth, based on their past performance, and thus estimated a growth target. But, now 30 states require teacher evaluations to use student performance, and that has expanded use of algorithms for high-stakes purposes. Value-added estimates are now being applied to secondary schools, even though the vast majority of research on their use has been limited to elementary schools.

Sawchuk reports on two major studies that should slow this rush to evaluate all teachers with experimental models. This month, Douglas Harris will be presenting "Bias of Public Sector Worker Performance Monitoring." It is based on a six years of Florida middle school data on 1.3 million math students.

Harris divides classes into three types, remedial, midlevel, and advanced. After controlling for tracking, he finds that between 30 to 70% of teachers would be placed in the wrong category by normative value-added models. Moreover, Harris discovers that teachers who taught more remedial classes tended to have lower value-added scores than teachers who taught mainly higher-level classes. "That phenomenon was not due to the best teachers' disproportionately teaching the more-rigorous classes, as is often asserted. Instead, the paper shows, even those teachers who taught courses at more than one level of rigor did better when their performance teaching the upper-level classes was compared against that from the lower-level classes."

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Research-Based Options for Education Policy Making

The first in a new series of two-page briefs summarizing the state of play in education policy research offers suggestions for policymakers designing teacher evaluation systems.

The paper is written by Dr. William Mathis, managing director of the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

Teachers are important, and policies mandating high-stakes evaluations of teachers are at the forefront of popular school reforms. Today’s dominant approach labels teachers as effective or ineffective based in large part on a statistical analysis of students’ test-score performance. Teachers judged effective are rewarded, and those found ineffective are sanctioned.

While such summative evaluations can be useful, lawmakers should be wary of approaches based in large part on test scores: the error in the measurements is large—which results in many teachers being incorrectly labeled as effective or ineffective;1 relevant test scores are not available for the students taught by most teachers, given that only certain grade levels and subject areas are tested; and the incentives created by high-stakes use of test scores drive undesirable teaching practices such as curriculum narrowing and teaching to the test.

Summative initiatives should also be balanced with formative approaches, which identify strengths and weaknesses of teachers and directly focus on developing and improving their teaching. Measures that de-emphasize test scores are more labor intensive but have far greater potential to enrich instruction and improve education.

The paper goes on to give some key research points and advice for policy makers

• If the objective is improving educational practice, formative evaluations that guide a teacher’s improvement provide greater benefits than summative evaluations.
• If the objective is to improve educational performance, outside-school factors must also be addressed. Teacher evaluation cannot replace or compensate for these much stronger determinants of student learning. The importance of these outside-school factors should also caution against policies that simplistically attribute student test scores to teachers.
• The results produced by value-added (test-score growth) models alone are highly unstable. They vary from year to year, from classroom to classroom, and from one test to another. Substantial reliance on these models can lead to practical, ethical and legal problems.
• High-stakes evaluations based in substantial part on students’ test scores narrow the curriculum by diminishing or pushing out non-tested subjects, knowledge, and skills.
• Teacher evaluation systems necessarily involve trade-offs, and specific design choices are controversial, so it is important to involve all key stakeholders in system design or selection.
• To be successful, schools must invest in their teacher evaluation systems. An adequate number of highly trained evaluators must be available.
• Given the wide variety of teacher roles and the many factors that influence learning that are outside the control of the teacher, a wide variety of measures of teacher effectiveness is also indicated. By diversifying, the weakness of any single measure is offset by the strengths of another.
• High-quality research on existing evaluative programs and tools should inform the design of teacher evaluation systems. States and districts should investigate balanced models such as PAR and the Danielson Framework, closely examine the evidence concerning strengths and weaknesses of each model, and never attach high-stakes consequences to teachers which the evidence cannot validly support.

The paper can be read in full below

Research-Based Options for Education Policy Making

New study - Charters cut costs to make money

Seems obvious that charter school teachers work longer hours and are less experienced. How else can charter school management companies make a profit?

Charter school teachers tend to have fewer years of experience, and work longer hours than their counterparts in public, non-charter schools, a new analysis suggests.

Yet by another measure—the hiring of teachers from "highly selective" colleges—both charters and traditional public schools lag well behind the private school norm.

Many of those findings are consistent with past research, notes the author of the paper, Marisa Cannata of Vanderbilt University, whose work is included as part of a newly published book, Exploring the School Choice Universe: Evidence and Recommendations. But the analysis provides fresh insights into who goes to work in public and private sector schools, and what kinds of conditions they encounter when they get there.

Some are even going to crazy lengths to maximize profits, as Stephen Dyer discovers

There is an amazing story out of Florida now posted here and here that delineates just how outrageously high K-12, Inc. schools' student-teacher ratios are. K-12, Inc. runs Ohio Virtual Academy, with educates about 10,000 Ohio students.

Just a few tidbits. The heads of schools are told that they should have the following ratios in the following grades:

K-8: 60-72:1
9-12: 225-275:1

That's right. K-12, Inc. thinks it's a good idea to have kindergartners in classes as high as 72:1 and high school kids in 275:1 classes.

We really don't need research anymore, just look at any of these companies 10k financial filings.